In general, sensor devices have a short transmission range, low data transmission rate, low power consumption, low memory, and low price. In a low-power sensor network including sensor devices, a multi-hop routing supporting a mesh topology is required.
Low-power multi-hop routing schemes are applied to sensor networks in a wide variety of environments. Much research on a node centric, data centric, and location centric low-power multi-hop routing scheme has been conducted. In a node centric multi-hop routing scheme, each sensor node has its own identification (ID), and performs routing using an ID. In a location centric multi-hop routing scheme, a sensor node recognizes an address and performs routing using location information of each sensor node. In a data centric multi-hop routing scheme, a user does not have information about a location of a sensor node providing required information, and when information of a particular condition is requested, a sensor node including the information responds. That is, since these researches have been conducted in a way that routing information is defined based on very service-specific way, the multiple routing schemes may not be efficiently installed in a sensor node for common purpose, when a sensor node with low-power and low memory is installed for a variety of purposes which requires different routing schemes.
It has been suggested to reuse the multi-hop routing schemes designed for Ad-hoc networks such as an Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Manet On-demand (DYMO), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and the like for multi-hop routing function in a sensor network. However, these multi-hop routing schemes are designed not for low-power, low-memory sensor networks, and thus these scheme may not be suitable for a sensor node.
In some research, a method enabling an ad-hoc routing scheme such as an AODV, designed in an IP network, to be suitable for a sensor node has been conducted by simplifying the routing information and process. However, each sensor node is required to install different routing scheme if the service requires different routing schemes. Easy way to make the sensor node use for common-purpose is to install more than one routing scheme. However, it causes processing complexity and memory waste which is critical in sensor node, as the routing protocols use all different message scheme and processing procedures.